The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  He sighed. “Now I feel stupid.”

  “Don’t. Occam’s Razor.”

  “The simplest solution tends to be the right one.”

  “Right. The simplest explanation is that the office is still on the take somehow because it always was and that Knox is just better at hiding it than Nocek was. No one just gives money away, especially with no strings attached and on such a sustained basis. Second, it’s just an invisible part of your life, like breathing. You’ve never contributed and you’re so used to it being here, so used to abstaining, you wouldn’t notice unless it stopped. Third, you’ve got so many worries on your mind, I’d have been surprised if you had enough room in your brain to give it more than a passing thought. You have a very sick wife and active teenage kids. You’re constantly running. I only figured it out because I live with Knox and I see another side of him that nobody else sees. I have the time and the silence to think about it. If I didn’t have that, I’d still think it was hot, too, the way I’m supposed to.”

  “Thanks, Justice,” he sighed as he arose to clean up his lunch mess and go to the restroom. She could tell he was distressed by not only the idea that he hadn’t picked up on it like the others had, but by the fact that he’d missed out on all that cash trying to be honorable.

  Justice sat and contemplated the wall, her chin in her hand, chewing on Richard’s situation and how she might help him.

  “Why’d you tell him that?”

  She started as Knox’s low growl sounded behind her. She looked over her shoulder at him and her belly did a little flip when she took in his lithe bigness and golden darkness. She’d ached for him to make love to her every night for the last week as he’d slept curled up around her. But it was her own fault. All she had to do was turn over and kiss him and she just couldn’t work up the nerve.

  “Why not?” she asked after a minute of staring at him. “He needs the money more than anyone here and you could’ve just taken him aside and told him, instead of letting him think he was doing the honorable thing at the cost of his family’s welfare. Why do you always do things the hard way?”

  He paused for a moment and looked at her, an odd expression on his face. “How did you figure it out?” he finally asked.

  She swiveled in her chair to face him, relaxed, her elbows on the arms of it and her fingers steepled. “Knox. I realize that your lasting impression of me is that mousy little girl her first week in law school, and that’s what you see when you look at me, and that’s what you’re always going to see. What you don’t know is that now, three years later, my name and my opinion have some meaning in the world. If you’d paid attention while I was in law school or read my CV, you’d know that, but apparently you didn’t pay attention and you still haven’t read my CV. I didn’t make summa cum laude and a name for myself by being stupid.”

  “I wouldn’t have hired you if I thought you were stupid.”

  “You hired me because I saw you shoot a man in the head—and that was a bogus reason anyway. My intellect or lack of it had nothing to do with it.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Well, that’s true.”

  And that hurt. More than anything he’d ever said to her. “Oh, go away,” she muttered.

  “What did you say to me?”

  There was that hardness, that chilling tone in his voice, but because she didn’t fall for that anymore, she glared up at him and spoke through her gritted teeth and clenched jaw. “I. Said. Go. Away.”

  His jaw worked in silence, his eyes a glittering sky blue. Justice simply watched as he braced his hands on the arms of her chair and kissed her. Hard.

  Without a thought, Justice returned it, as much to shove his attitude back in his face as to suck every smidgen of pleasure out of his kiss. He hadn’t kissed her since she’d come back—and oh, how she missed feeling his lips on hers, his tongue in her mouth.

  “You’re asking for it,” Knox muttered when he jerked away from her suddenly.

  “Then why don’t you give it to me?” Justice shot back.

  “Is that an invitation?” he growled.

  “What do you think?” she snapped.

  They stared at one another for what seemed like hours, neither breaking eye contact. Justice felt no insecurity, no embarrassment; she just wanted to have an excuse to look at that beautiful face.

  Finally, Knox raised a hand to run his fingers through her hair. “You have a lot of guts, Iustitia Hilliard,” he murmured. “I like that.”

  Noises sounded in the hallway and he backed away. Cleared his throat. “Lunch is almost over and you’ve got work to do.” She watched him as he turned and sauntered back to his office. She took a deep breath and began to smile. Well. She supposed she knew what she’d be doing all night tonight, and it thrilled her beyond reason.

  Fifteen minutes later she was buried in paperwork. Conversation swirled around her and she easily pulled out comments and questions from the general hubbub that were aimed at her. Justice attempted to keep herself focused on work, which was really a losing battle. Thinking about being naked with Knox in bed, making lo—

  “Good God!”

  The gasp was somehow able to pierce the thick conversation, and the entire population of the office stared at Richard, whose face had lightened a few shades of brown. He held a manila envelope in his hands and looked down in the gaping space.

  “What’s wrong, Connelly?” Patrick asked on a forced laugh in order to maintain some sense of joviality in the face of their coworker’s astonishment. They all wondered how bad the news was. “You look like that thing’s going to take a hunk out of your nose.”

  He looked up, then. “Okay, who did this?” he asked as he pulled out a thick stack of worn one-hundred-dollar bills and looked around.

  One of the residents snorted. “Yeah, like we’d cut you in if we didn’t have to.” Justice rolled her eyes. Hicks caught her look, then grinned and winked at her. She returned his grin and chuckled to herself.

  Richard looked around and realized no one was lying. They all got along well, but their altruism only extended to the sharing of office supplies and trading food. They communicated by yelling and cussing at each other. No one remembered birthdays, no one asked after another’s family, and no one bought someone else lunch.

  Except Justice, who had done all three for Richard. It was to her he turned.

  “Justice?”

  And Justice could see the tears of gratitude that shimmered in his eyes and threatened to fall. Now he knew. His initial reaction had been habit and he only needed her validation that taking it was not dishonorable. She shrugged.

  He put the money carefully back in the envelope and gulped. “How much?” asked Hicks.

  “Twelve thousand dollars,” he whispered, because his voice was creaky with tears.

  Justice shook her head. She looked up through her eyelashes at Knox, who was engaged in deep conversation with a detective, oblivious to what was going on around him. She smiled to herself and then sucked in a soft breath when he slid her a glance and a sly smile.

  * * * * *

  90: OCCAM’S RAZOR

  He was nowhere to be found when she got home and she screeched in utter frustration. She didn’t want to crack her laptop open. She didn’t want to cook. She didn’t even want to go out to the barn to see how much progress Sebastian had made on his painting—he was probably still mad at her anyway, since he hadn’t seen fit to speak to her yet.

  So she went downstairs and flopped on the couch, flipping through channels. Nothing. Naturally, when she wanted to watch TV, there was nothing on in two hundred and fifty channels.

  What she wanted was for Knox to come home and take her to bed. Unless and until that happened, she was going to be restless.

  She got up and walked around the library again, looking more closely at the spines. In the section that was dedicated to her favorite subject, the Constitution, there was a box she’d missed before. A battered shoe box was buried in the midst of the mess of book
s and booklets, pamphlets and stray papers.

  Justice pulled it out, opened it, and nearly dropped it in shock. There were copies of the National Review that she had written for, copies of the two issues of the UMKC Law Review that contained her articles, and printouts from her blog posts. Each magazine was opened back to the articles with her byline. Each law journal article was marked with stickies. They were all dog-eared.

  Every word she’d published—print and online—was here, yellow highlighted, written on, circled, redlined, beat to death. The only magazine issues in the box were the ones with her articles; there were no others.

  Her hand to her mouth, she half cried-half laughed. She took the box to the couch and sank to the floor, her back to it. She began to sift through them to see what he’d written in his distinctive hand: elegantly stylized block letters, the way an architect would write.

  Comments were sparse and seemed to run fifty-fifty on whether he agreed or not, whether he found a logical fallacy or not, whether he thought something was irrelevant or could have been emphasized more.

  Then she flipped through the printouts of her blog posts and comments, also marked. What most interested her, however, were the printouts of hamlet’s comments. On seeing his moniker, she felt that pain behind her sternum again.

  *

  JMcKinley writes:

  hamlet, name that quote: In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

  *

  Underneath that printout he’d written the answer to the question: Umberto Eco.

  Justice sucked in a long, shocked breath, held it. Then she giggled and threw her head back to look at the ceiling to squeal, kicking her legs up in the air, feeling her face flush. Grinning, she looked for and found a comment she’d made very early in her official blogging career: You remind me of a professor I had my first week in law school.

  He’d highlighted that comment in yellow and drawn a smiley face.

  Was this why her?

  Suddenly the couch behind her shifted and she gasped, looking up to see Knox lifting one leg over her head so that he could sit on the couch with her between his knees.

  She didn’t know what to say to him, so she didn’t say anything. He leaned forward against her, wrapping his arms around her to read over her shoulder. Her insides went all tingly.

  “I wondered how long it’d take you to find that,” he murmured.

  Justice’s eyes welled with tears that tracked down her cheeks and splattered on the printouts, smearing the ink.

  “Why did you leave me?” she whispered. “I needed you so much.”

  He said nothing for a minute. “I’ve watched Sebastian compete with Ford for years—and lose—and the last thing I wanted to do was catch myself in that net, but somehow . . . ” He sighed. “It wasn’t easy to stay away from you. I knew you felt abandoned and I’m sorry.”

  “Did you get my email?” she asked, hearing the pathetic plea in her own voice.

  “Yes,” he breathed. “I still have it. Sometimes I hit reply but I don’t know what to say.”

  “Why me?” she whispered, needing him to spell it out in words because conclusions about such things as these were just too risky.

  “Oh, Iustitia. All I wanted was to see you before Eric sent you on your way east, wait until after my birthday and come find you. I never wanted you to see me in my world, who the Chouteau County prosecutor really is. But then I shot Jones and I saw the look on your face, watched your heart break. I couldn’t let you go knowing I’d never, ever have a chance with you after that. Your being my wife had nothing at all to do with the proviso.”

  Justice’s soul began to fill with light. “Why did you let me go, then?”

  “I had become Lucifer.”

  She thought about that a moment, then nodded in understanding. “And the baby?”

  “I don’t want to fulfill the proviso. Sebastian and Bryce have that under control and it’s not dependent on me.” He paused for a moment. “Iustitia, I fell in love with you that day in class, the second I touched you. Every day I bantered with you online I fell more in love with you. Every day you were in my office was torture for me. I let you go because I love you and I couldn’t stand what I’d done to you. I’d like to have children with you and I’ll take any children you want to give me—or not—just so long as I have you.”

  She could barely breathe. This was everything she’d ever wanted from him. He nibbled on her neck; her eyes closed and she tilted her head so that he had easier access.

  “Never,” he murmured, “in a million years did I think you’d come back to me. Why? Why did you come back to me?”

  “I wanted to be your lover. I hoped maybe you might come to love me someday.”

  “I do. I always have. Come to bed with me,” he whispered in her ear, warm butterscotch. “Come make love with me. Please.”

  * * * * *

  91: HEY NINETEEN

  By the time Knox’s mouth made its slow and agonizing journey down Justice’s belly and between her thighs, she writhed in pleasure. She gasped when his big hands caressed her hips and grasped them, tilting her up so he could dip his tongue up inside her, lapping at her most sensitive spots. She marveled at the scandalous deliciousness of it all, her legs wide, her fingers clutching his coarse blond hair to bring him into her even closer.

  She bloomed and popped with a cry and her back arched. Her hips shot up out of Knox’s hands, then fell back to the bed. She sighed when Knox rose above her, then sank into her, slowly, carefully. She wrapped her arms around his ribs, then ran her hands down his back until she clasped his buttocks to pull him deeper inside her.

  He shuddered and groaned when she did that, which made her body fall apart, turn to liquid—and the feel of him sliding inside her so tight, so slick, so . . . perfect . . .

  Justice started to wonder why it hadn’t been that way before because she’d been just as wet then as now—

  “Stop thinking,” he whispered in her ear. “I can tell when you start thinking.”

  “Mmmm, talk to me,” she said, holding his face between her hands and kissing him, tasting herself on his tongue and his lips and growing even more aroused.

  So he talked to her. He spoke in time with every thrust, told her what to do and how to do it and why. He told her what he wanted her to do to him and when and why. He said naughty things to her, words she never liked because they weren’t dignified, but in that instant, she fell in love with each and every one of them as he spoke them, how he used them.

  All night, he made her come and come again, turning her over and rolling her on top and doing things she’d never imagined a human could do. She knew what animals did, which she had always assumed people did, more or less, after adjusting for differences in anatomy.

  Then her horizons had been widened from the merely mechanical, the ordinary and pedestrian, to the extremes of human sexuality with no stops in between. In one night with Knox, she’d hit her stride and had become rather proficient at a couple of things that, with no more information than she’d had before Anne Rice, she would never have thought to try.

  “Professor Hilliard,” she murmured as he settled himself beside her, half on top of her, his big hand sweeping her body from breast to thigh and back again.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss McKinley?”

  “You’re a very good teacher.” She cupped his scrotum in her hand to feel the velvet, the delicate skin there, the stones that lay hidden inside. He closed his eyes and sighed, shifting so she had better access. She stroked his semi-hard length and liked that he was sticky from sex with her, that he wore her scent as she wore his.

  “You’re a much more willing student than I gave you credit for. My apologies, Miss McKinley.”

  “I think I could be downright perverted if I had enough practice.”

  “You need more practice, Miss McKinley. You’r
e eager enough, but you’re a rank amateur.” Justice shoved at him and he laughed. “You give head like a veteran, though. Are you sure you’ve never done that before?”

  She harrumphed. “I think I’d have remembered that.”

  “Why?” he whispered as he caressed her cheek, staring at her, making her blush with pleasure. “Why haven’t you had a dozen lovers?”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Do you want me to have had?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. What I don’t understand is how you’ve gone all these years without some man grabbing you and hauling you off to bed. You’re extremely sensual, uninhibited. I just— I don’t get it.”

  “I didn’t have time,” she said simply. “I was too busy trying to survive and get ahead in the world.”

  He sighed.

  “So how many have you had before me?” she asked, trying to remember that she was the one he wanted, so it shouldn’t matter.

  He tensed just a little, but then relaxed and said, “Five. I was twenty-six the first time I got laid and my relationships were serious and long term.”

  She struggled to one elbow to stare down at him, incredulous. “You’re kidding.”

  “Before Parley, I was . . . a good Mormon kid. Celibacy until marriage is part of the deal.”

  She said nothing for a moment and then, “You miss being able to say that about yourself, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “I’ve left it up to the Lord to decide if I made the right decision and . . . I have faith that he might agree with my choice, even though the church didn’t. If he doesn’t, I’ll take the consequences.”

  “Oh, Knox,” she sighed. “There is no God.”

  She could feel his chuckle against her body as she cocooned herself in his arms and the warm covers and the wonderfully perfect mattress. Her eyes began to close, too tired to even relive the preceding hours when her beautiful lover had loosed her Inner Pervert.